stay soft

The conversation began on a stroll around the neighborhood. It was a day like any other. Our daughter, now 1, treaded over a bed of fallen leaves. The crunch of crisp orange foliage was the sound of her exploration. Pushing her vacant stroller over uneven path, I opened up with a rhetorical one, ‘You know what’s funny? Being a mom hasn’t fully hit me’, I told my husband.

I have this conversation with myself often. It’s a dialogue accompanied by flashbacks from the day of her birth. The memory serves as affirmation for my doubting mind. Obviously, she’s mine. I had a front row seat at the welcoming party as she exited my body. But if I’m honest, there’s so much about her beauty that triggers insecurity and trauma in me. Specifically, all the ways she doesn’t resemble me. I can almost always expect someone at a family gathering to question which side her light eyes derive from or claim them like a personal contribution. Usher in the jokes about me looking more like the nanny than her mother. Comparisons to uncles, aunts, and cousins are first in line before I am considered. I wonder if in the depths of their conscience the question is more rhetorical than curious because based on my features they couldn’t possibly come from me, could they?

“Every trace of kink and curl burned and buried along with my ancestors.”

Beauty and I have a complicated history. Many of these complications stemming from troubling racial views in Dominican culture and America’s struggle with race and immigration. Messages of being unwanted or unqualified sat heavy over my parent’s shoulders, even more so my mother. As the youngest of two and the only girl, how I present myself has always been a topic of discussion. Whether it was hair, wardrobe, temperament, or an unchangeable familial trait, I couldn’t afford to be unapologetically morena as the daughter of immigrants in a progressive America.

I was born with a head full of hair. The soft black cap gave my mother, otra morena de “pelo malo”, something to boast in. My nose, a gift from my grandfather, became a flaring concern. The pronounced shape in my nostrils prompted her to routinely, and ever so gently, pinch the rims of them in hopes of forcing the growing body to reconsider itself, like dough at the hands of a baker.

The older I got the greater the demand. At the age of 5 an aunt, by way of marriage, decided that my hair was best relaxed than natural — a call made without consulting my mother. By the time I was picked up from the salon it was much too late. My hair had been laced. Every trace of kink and curl burned and buried along with my ancestors. Whatever fight remained in my mother then, to preserve what was natural, had suddenly been muzzled by the voice of a woman whose coveted Spaniard features were the standard for Caribbean beauty.

Staying soft was the mandate if I intended to get ahead. Straighten your hair it’ll soften their gaze. My mom often describes it as “cabello como el de nosotros” as though it were some anomaly or curse. Mind your words it’ll soften their perception — meek qualities we often misinterpret of the Proverbs 31 woman. Bury your anger it’ll soften your appeal. Because passion hits different when it comes in color. The ultimate softening was aimed at anything that would give away my black roots. Anything that could be tamed and made less “aggressive” to keep me in the race, was.

“Because passion hits different when it comes in color.”

Fast forward 33 years to motherhood, here I am confronted by unearthed self hate, and of all things to trigger it, my daughter’s beauty. I thought she’d match my complexion. Be unmistakably mine in her features like I am for my mother. Truthfully and erroneously, I was longing for an ally. Someone to relate to so I wouldn’t be outnumbered in the experience that comes with this skin.

There is much to unearth and unlearn. I’m still rummaging through the boxes. What is clear in this sudden awakening is that the subconscious is unloading and pushing for ultimate healing — a process my old therapist, Patience, paralleled to a form of mental spring cleaning. The replays of her birth are more than trauma sifters. They’re not intended to leave me in despair. They are a foreshadow to my rebirth and rise of the generation that follows me.